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to them (Locke, Frederick, Lee, & Bobko, 1984; Taylor, Locke, Lee, & Gist, 1984; Wood & Bandura, in press). As I will show later, challenging goals raise the level of motivation and performance attainments (Locke, Shaw, Saari, & Latham, 1981; Mento, Steel, & Karren, 1987). A major function of thought is to enable people to predict the occurrence of events and to create the means for exercising control over those that affect their daily lives. Many activities involve inferential judgments about conditional relations between events in probabilistic environments. Discernment of predictive rules requires cognitive processing of multidimensional information that contains many ambiguities and uncertainties. In ferreting out predictive rules, people must draw on their state of knowledge to generate hypotheses about predictive factors, to weight and integrate them into composite rules, to test their judgments against outcome information, and to remember which notions they had tested and how well they had worked. It requires a strong sense of efficacy to remain task oriented in the face of judgmental failures. Indeed, people who believe strongly in their problemsolving capabilities remain highly efficient in their analytic thinking in complex decision-making situations, whereas those who are plagued by self-doubts are erratic in their analytic thinking (Bandura & Wood, 1989; Wood & Bandura, 1989). Quality of analytic thinking, in turn, affects performance accomplishments. People's perceptions of their efficacy influence the types of anticipatory scenarios they construct and reiterate. Those who have a high sense of efficacy visualize success scenarios that provide positive guides for performance. Those who judge themselves as inefficacious are more inclined to visualize failure scenarios that undermine performance by dwelling on how things will go wrong. Cognitive simulations in which individuals visualize themselves executing activities skillfully enhance subsequent performance (Bandura, 1986; Corbin, 1972; Feltz & Landers, 1983; Kazdin, 1978; Markus, Cross, & Wurf, in press). Perceived self-efficacy and cognitive simulation affect each other bidirectionally. A high sense of efficacy fosters cognitive constructions of effective actions, and cognitive reiteration of efficacious courses of action strengthens self-perceptions of efficacy (Bandura & Adams, 1977; Kazdin, 1979), Self-efficacy beliefs usually affect cognitive functioning through the joint influence of motivational and information-processing operations. This dual influence is illustrated in studies of different sources of variation in memory performance. The stronger people's beliefs in their memory capacities, the more effort they devote to cognitive processing of memory tasks, which, in turn, enhances their memory performances (Berry, 1987). Preparation of this article was facilitated by Public Health Research Grant No. MH-5162-25 from the National Institute for Mental Health. This article was presented as an invited address at the XXIV International Congress of Psychology, Sydney, Australia, August 1988. Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Albert Bandura, Building 420, Jordan Hall, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305. Motivational Processes People's self-efficacy beliefs determine their level of motivation, as reflected in how much effort they will exert in an endeavor and how long they will persevere in the face of obstacles. The stronger the belief in their capabilities, the greater and more persistent are their efforts (Bandura, 1988a). When faced with difficulties, people who are beset by self-doubts about their capabilities slacken their efforts or abort their attempts prematurely and quickly settle for mediocre solutions, whereas those who have a strong belief in their capabilities exert greater effort to master the challenge (Bandura & Cervone, 1983, 1986; Cervone & Peake, 1986; Jacobs, Prentice-Dunn, & Rogers, 1984; Weinberg, Gould, & Jackson, 1979). Strong perseverance usually pays off in performance accomplishments. There is a growing body of evidence that human attainments and positive well-being require an optimistic sense of personal efficacy (Bandura, 1986). This is because ordinary social realities are strewn with difficulties. They are full of impediments, failures, adversities, setbacks, frustrations, and inequities. People must have a robust sense of personal efficacy to sustain the perseverant effort needed to succeed. Self-doubts can set in quickly after some failures or reverses. The important matter is not that difficulties arouse self-doubt, which is a natural immediate reaction, but the speed of recovery of perceived self-efficacy from difficulties. Some people quickly recover their self-assurance; others lose faith in their capabilities. Because the acquisition of knowledge and competencies usually requires sustained effort in the face of difficulties and setbacks, it is resiliency of self-belief that counts. In his revealing book, titled Rejection, John White (1982) provides vivid testimony that the striking characteristic of people who have achieved eminence in their fields is an inextinguishable sense of efficacy and a firm belief in the worth of what they are doing. This resilient self-belief system enabled them to override repeated early rejections of their work. A robust sense of personal efficacy provides the needed staying power. Many of our literary classics brought their authors repeated rejections. The novelist, Saroyan, accumulated several thousand rejections before he had his first literary piece published. Gertrude Stein continued to submit poems to editors for about 20 years before one was finally accepted. Now that is invincible self-efficacy. Such extraordinary persistence in the face of massive uninterrupted rejection defies explanation in terms of either reinforcement theory or utility theory. James Joyce's book, the Dubliners, was rejected by 22 publishers. Over a dozen publishers rejected a manuscript by e. e. cummings. When his mother finally published it, the dedication, printed in upper case, read: "With no thanks to..." followed by the long list of publishers who had rejected his offering. Early rejection is the rule, rather than the exception, in other creative endeavors. The Impressionists had to arrange their own art exhibitions because their works were routinely rejected by the Paris Salon. Van Gogh sold only one painting during his lifetime. Rodin was repeatedly 1176 September 1989 • American Psychologist
ejected by the Ecole des Beaux-Arts. The musical works of most renowned composers were initially greeted with derision. Stravinsky was run out of Paris by an enraged audience and critics when he first served them the Rite of Spring. Many other composers suffered the same fate, especially in the early phases of their career. The brilliant architect, Frank Lloyd Wright, was one of the more widely rejected architects during much of his career. To turn to more contemporary examples, Hollywood initially rejected the incomparable Fred Astaire for being only "a balding, skinny actor who can dance a little." Decca Records turned down a recording contract with the Beatles with the nonprophetic evaluation, "We don't like their sound. Groups of guitars are on their way out." Whoever issued that rejective pronouncement must cringe at each sight of a guitar. It is not uncommon for authors of scientific classics to experience repeated initial rejection of their work, often with hostile embellishments if it is too discrepant from the theories in vogue at the time. For example, John Garcia, who eventually won well-deserved recognition for his fundamental psychological discoveries, was once told by a reviewer of his oft-rejected manuscripts that one is no more likely to find the phenomenon he discovered than bird droppings in a cuckoo clock. Verbal droppings of this type demand tenacious self-belief to continue the tortuous search for new Muses. Scientists often reject theories and technologies that are ahead of their time. Because of the cold reception given to most innovations, the time between discovery and technical realization typically spans several decades. It is widely believed that misjudgment produces dysfunction. Certainly, gross miscalculation can create problems. However, optimistic self-appraisals of capability that are not unduly disparate from what is possible can be advantageous, whereas veridical judgments can be selflimiting. When people err in their self-appraisals, they tend to overestimate their capabilities. This is a benefit rather than a cognitive failing to be eradicated. If selfefficacy beliefs always reflected only what people could do routinely, they would rarely fail but they would not mount the extra effort needed to surpass their ordinary performances. Evidence suggests that it is often the so-called normals who are distorters of reality, but they exhibit selfenhancing biases that distort appraisals in the positive direction. The successful, the innovative, the sociable, the nonanxious, the nondespondent, and the social reformers take an optimistic view of their personal efficacy to exercise influence over events that affect their lives (Bandura, 1986; Taylor & Brown, 1988). If not unrealistically exaggerated, such self-beliefs foster the perseverant effort needed for personal and social accomplishments. The findings of laboratory studies are in accord with the records of human triumphs regarding the centrality of the motivational effects of self-beliefs of efficacy in human attainments. It takes a resilient sense of efficacy to override the numerous dissuading impediments to significant accomplishments. Affective Processes People's beliefs in their capabilities affect how much stress and depression they experience in threatening or taxing situations, as well as their level of motivation. Such emotional reactions can affect action both directly and indirectly by altering the nature and course of thinking. Threat is not a fixed property of situational events, nor does appraisal of the likelihood of aversive happenings rely solely on reading external signs of danger or safety. Rather, threat is a relational property concerning the match between perceived coping capabilities and potentially aversive aspects of the environment. People who believe they can exercise control over potential threats do not conjure up apprehensive cognitions and, therefore, are not perturbed by them. But those who believe they cannot manage potential threats experience high levels of stress and anxiety arousal. They tend to dwell on their coping deficiencies and view many aspects of their environment as fraught with danger. Through such inefficacious thought they distress themselves and constrain and impair their level of functioning (Bandura, 1988b, 1988c; Lazarus & Folkman, 1984; Meichenbaum, 1977; Sarason, 1975). That perceived coping efficacy operates as a cognitive mediator of anxiety has been tested by creating different levels of perceived coping efficacy and relating them at a microlevel to different manifestations of anxiety. Perceived coping inefficacy is accompanied by high levels of subjective distress, autonomic arousal, and plasma catecholamine secretion (Bandura, Reese, & Adams, 1982; Bandura, Taylor, Williams, Mefford, & Barchas, 1985). The combined results from the different psychobiological manifestations of emotional arousal are consistent in showing that anxiety and stress reactions are low when people cope with tasks in their perceived self-efficacy range. Self-doubts in coping efficacy produce substantial increases in subjective distress and physiological arousal. After perceived coping efficacy is strengthened to the maximal level, coping with the previously intimidating tasks no longer elicits differential psychobiological reactions. Anxiety arousal in situations involving some risks is affected not only by perceived coping efficacy but also by perceived self-efficacy to control intrusive perturbing cognitions. The exercise of control over one's own consciousness is summed up well in the proverb: "You cannot prevent the birds of worry and care from flying over your head. But you can stop them from building a nest in your head." Perceived self-efficacy in thought control is a key factor in the regulation of cognitively generated arousal. It is not the sheer frequency of aversive cognitions but the perceived inefficacy to turn them offthat is the major source of distress (Kent, 1987; Salkovskis & Harrison, 1984). Thus, the incidence of aversive cognitions is unrelated to anxiety level when variations in perceived thought control efficacy are controlled for, whereas perceived thought control efficacy is strongly related to anxiety level when the extent of aversive cognitions is controlled (Kent & Gibbons, 1987). September 1989 • American Psychologist 1177
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